July 11, 2004 - Dublin

     The good news is that the Great Southern hotel in Shannon is about 1000 feet from the entrance to the airport terminal.  The bad news, I suppose, is that we aren't flying from Shannon.  So we saddled up once more on our trusty bus and set off for Dublin in the good hands of our driver and guide, Robert Lambert.  This has been the only fully organized tour of our trip, and we are both pleased with C.I.E. as a tour company, but Robert is simply the mold all tour directors could be cast from.  He was well informed, an educator, a wit, and mostly, I was impressed with the level of total responsibility he assumed for the 49 of us.  I truly believe he could herd cats.

It rained off and on during the drive to Dublin, providing some scenery viewing but not so many photo opportunities. (I can hear you breathing that sigh of relief!)  Both Sheila and I have thoroughly enjoyed our "Taste of Ireland" and would both love to come back.  I won't try to list all the ways our images of Ireland shifted, but one stands out.        While we hardly expected a third world country, we never imagined that Ireland today is as economically vibrant as it is.  Robert said it was one of the poorest countries in Europe when it joined the EU (in the 70s, I believe), and it is the third wealthiest country in Europe today.  This picture, from our hotel window, gives visual evidence of the economic upsurge, with the crane becoming the Irish national bird.

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